[ptasci67]

This is one of those statements that is too broad to be true. We can't wave a wand and just say developers at FAANG companies are better than the bottom 1/3 and no more.

You do have a point here which I do agree with which most of those companies would refer to as "culture fit". Agree with it or not, having an employee that gels with the team is a critical aspect to hire for. You could have 10 Jeff Deans and get nothing done if they refuse to work together.

A significant problem I see here is that we are trying to define "good" on a linear scale which makes no sense to me. Is candidate A better than candidate B based on 6 hours of interviews about the same topics or a single take home test. Even Madden breaks down a person into dozens of traits and uses that to compare people. Tech companies like to flaunt how data driven they are but why hasn't that made it into hiring. For the most part, these decisions are still made on personal feelings of the interviewers which...yeah, that's not going to be very consistent and reproducible.

[Retric]

That’s a fair point, but in my experience professionalism trumps what is generally considered cultural fit. Also, while I agree ranking people is going to be team and role specific, much of what makes people effective is fairly universal.

Personally, I would place technical skill at around 50% of what makes up a talented software developer. Effective communication, ability and willingness to work with others, flexibly, work ethic, attention to detail, prioritization, etc are all important. But, I have found these things really tend to go together.

[necovek]

I think this is an important point: they tend to go together because, imho, they are necessary qualities for someone who will "get the job done" (as opposed to someone who will get stuck with no iption to dig themselves out).